Cholera and the Big Stink

ducking under away seeing a panty line or a condom there and you being unable to avoid it without risking injury from your surfboard and it's going straight onto your face is about as gross as he as you want again when we go surfing it's often in a soup of other people's excrement humans have always been regular and prodigious producers of waste the problem has always been how to get rid of it now from all parts the swelling kennels flow and bear their trophies with them as they go filth of all hues and colors seem to tell what street they sailed from by their sight or smell sweeping some butchers stools dung guts and blood drowned puppies thinking sprats all dredged in Bartlett dead cats and turnip tops come tumbling down the flood this was how a swift described London in the early 18th century up until the middle of the 19th century the cities of the world were united by one thing their stink London was the biggest city so that's where the stink was worst horses and cattle were leaving 3 million tons of droppings on the streets of English towns 20,000 on London alone at the same time humans added their own daily contribution the French phrase guard a low means mind the water it's where the word loo comes from even the clean living Romans had to raise their pavements one and a half feet above the roadway to keep their sandals clear of a mire they place tall stepping stones to cross the streets living instinct was a way of life but the Romans made it into an art public lavatories for public meeting places with marble benches with arm rests central heating mosaics perfumed oils burnt and fountains played they even had gods dedicated to defecation offerings were made to stoke Usha's and crepitus the gods of order and conveniences and clois inna goddess of the common sewer no running water carried away the endeavors of the Romans it only carried them to the Tiber which became filthier and filthy as a result like everywhere else Rome stank when Dick Whittington arrived in London in the 15th century he found that the streets were certainly not paved with gold as Lord Mayor he had the idea of building the biggest ever public loo in Greenwich Street over a long gully opening onto the river sixty-four men and 64 women sat on two long rows of seats cheek to cheek it was called Whittington's long house there were no partitions but no embarrassment embarrassment hadn't been invented yet it wasn't long before brass was being made from the muck the recurs all gone farmers whose job it wants to empty the cesspits were very highly paid for this work was as perilous as it was dirty everyone knew the fate of rich of the raker who lost his footing to drown in excrement throughout the Middle Ages human waste was seen as a valuable resource it was collected from the city by nightsoil men and sold to farmers to return to the land filth to tooth just as the Romans had done and as the Chinese still do a lively trade developed from this ready market one inventive entrepreneur became the first human public convenience his bucket was available to anyone who could afford to spend a penny this device of mine requires not a sea full of water but a system in 1594 came the idea which would eventually revolutionize the scent of man for his royal godmother Queen Elizabeth the first Sir John Harington devised a self-emptying slop pan it had a trap which opened and was then rinsed with water from a system he wrote up the instructions as an elaborate literary joke but Her Majesty was not amused the royal flush didn't catch on otherwise we might well be going for a Harrington today unfortunately Sir John had been 200 years ahead of his time households even very grand ones continued to stink in 1660 samuel peeps writing from the aptly named seething Lane noted going down to my cellar I put my foot into a great heap of turds by which I find that mr. Turner's house of office is full and comes into my cellar which does trouble me the smell and the mess lingered on for another hundred years the breakthrough came in 1775 a Bull Street watchmaker named Alexander Cummings resurrected Harrington's idea but he added a vital improvement he realized that if he curved the soil pipe into an S shape a valuable water trap would be created the waste could be washed away as before but the stink couldn't return through the impenetrable water barrier the water closet had arrived now at the flush of a handle your wastes could cease to be your problem and become someone else's I think humans and particularly modern humans have always heard a philosophy about things that they wish to get rid of you either burn it bury it or throw it in the sea or indeed into the load nearest local water course and the number of supermarket trolleys that you can spot in any average River by looking over the bridge bares testing me to that we also tend to operate an out of sight out of mind ethic almost when it comes to these things and certainly there are very very good reasons why one should avoid her handling one's own excrement but unfortunately the solution that we come up with simply produces huge amounts of polluted water at the end of the 18th century nobody had thought of this here was the solution everyone had been waiting for and by 1797 one manufacturer had sold some six thousand of the new doubling seas but no one had considered where all the extra water was going to go it poured down into the cesspits and burst them open sewage welled up through floorboards and sloshed on the streets the gurgling brooks which had once supplied London's drinking water turned to open the sewers as the stench became unbearable the rivers were covered over and forgotten such a sight out of mind but beneath the streets the putrid in flammable gases began to build up in 1846 came the consequences one of the biggest of the smothered rivers and the feet exploded a tidal wave of sewage erupted out over the poorhouses and a thames steamboat was smashed against Blackfriars Bridge the stinking River which gave fleet-street its name was back burying the trophies of london's abattoirs gasworks dye works blue works bone works tanneries chemical works and the contents of London's sewers needless to say it was the poor who suffered most sir we ain't got no previous no dustman's no water splice and no drain or sewer you old price distinction that girl is disgusting we Oliver suffer and numbers are real and if a caller accounts Lord out was we are living like eggs in 18-49 this desperate letter was published cholera did indeed come while the prosperous West End drew most of their drinking water from upstream the poor ended up drinking their own effluent and with every flush this waterborne disease was spread further grandmother grandmother tell me the truth how many years am I going to live one two out of every thousand children a hundred and fifty three didn't survive London was dying from lack of drains the summer of 1858 was long and stiflingly hot paddle steamers churned the Thames into stinking Eddie's the smell was so bad that the windows of the houses of parliament had to be draped with curtains soaked in chloride of lime 1858 would become known as the year of the big stink tons of chalk lime and carbolic acid were tipped into the river in an attempt to control the smell but the stink wouldn't go away the problem had at last reached the noses of those who could do something about it a bill was brought within a fortnight a select committee set up to find a way of reducing his stench the brief to clean up London more than 140 schemes were considered including one which used vacuum tubes to suck sewage from affluent West End to the effluent East and the winning scheme was eventually put forward by a tiny man with a remarkably fine set of whiskers the engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works Joseph Bazalgette experimenting with floats basil dirt discovered that the piston effect of the tide meant that sewage entering the river at the West End would float ten miles out on the ebb tide but then float nine and a half miles back again on the next tide back under the noses of parliament he discovered that it could take up to 50 days of chewing and throwing for the sewage to reach the sea stinking all the way planning to carry the sewage out through a system of underground tunnels he needed to work out the point nearest to London where the surge could safely be discharged without it drifting back upstream into the city basal Jets finger alighted on the hapless inhabitants of cross nests on the south side of the river and the village of barking on the north at last there would be a chance of sweet smelling water basal Jets main drainage scheme was to be one of the great engineering feats of the Victorian age the intrepid journalist John Hollingshead was one of the first to report on the magnificent undertaking feeling a desire to inspect a main sewer almost from its source to its point of discharge into the Thames I applied to the proper authorities and was obligingly told that they had not the slightest objection to gratify in what they evidently thought a very singular taste I felt like a bear in a pit at the Zoological Gardens as I descended and the down would flood pressed rather heavily against the back of my legs and the bottom was ragged and uncertain when I caught a glimpse of the water which I was waiting in above my knees I saw it was as black as ink basal Jets system was the first in the world to integrate two functions both the drain for rainwater and a sewer for foul water it would carry the sewage away by the simplest method of all gravity mr. Bassel jet span is three vast tunnels on the north side of the Thames extending from west to east and to vast tunnels on the south side these will cut through at different levels intercepting the daily millions of gallons of sewage and carry them away to the river the great middle level sewer begins an egg-shaped tunnel basil dirt built his sewer tunnels in the shape of an upturned egg to keep the sewage on the move he worked out that the minimum gradient was a drop of two feet per mile an egg shape meant that the lower the water level the faster the flow and so the more effective the scarring of the sewers Londyn of the 1870s as portrayed by the engraver Gustave doré a was a transformed city a thousand miles of sewers now carried away the filth of rich and poor alike as they still do today as basil Jett himself observed the habits of the population of various parts of London are indicated by the flow of sewage the maximum flow in the fashionable parts of the West Bend being two or three hours later than those of the East End the contents of a lavatory flushed in safe Fulham now began an underground journey of some 17 miles moronga checked by disease London's population began to grow and grow there's no doubt that the infrastructure surged infrastructure that the Victorians put together has saved a great deal of problems in terms of typhoid and cholera and polio outbreaks and of course these things have also been helped by the big vaccination programs but unfortunately it's a classic example of one of those things where there is no such thing as a free lunch because all you're doing is taking your problem and transporting it elsewhere this is precisely what basil dirt had done only three years after the Grand official opening celebrations of his new sewers came the consequences on the 3rd of September 1878 the Princess Alice a paddle steamer collided with a 900 tonne coal barge on the river near Barking and sank 623 perished at first the passengers were thought to have drowned but during the inquest the first doubts were put forward by a pharmaceutical chemist when six hundred are plunged into a river only a mile wide it is astonishing that only five or six should have saved their lives by swimming the reason there is projected into the river two continuous columns of decomposed fermenting sewage he seemed like soda water with painful gases so black that the water is stained for miles and discharging a corrupt charnel-house odor a true poison as fatal as plastic acid one witness said that the water both for taste and smell was something he could hardly describe the issue is back on the doorstep of Westminster action duly followed and the first rudimentary sewage treatment was initiated the solid matter was separated into a sludge loaded onto barges which had become affectionately known as gravy boats and dumped in the sea by 1887 only liquid effluent was being run into the river all seemed well again meanwhile wealthy Londoners were getting used to a new white disinfected vitreous glazed world w sees sprouted like mushrooms the age of the sanitary Baron had arrived the privy counsellors of whose names were still reminded at least twice a day shanks Jones Armitage Twyford and of course the immortal crapper competition was highest for the most effective flush the record was set in 1884 by the Jennings pedestal vars ten apples one flat sponge three ping-pong balls Lamas grease four pieces of paper even the apprentices cup went down the pan the Magnificent flushing machine could wash away anything as trickling spirals of water gave way to mighty torrents the brand names reflected the fact but they the new efficiency brought hygiene had also brought something else prudery by 1900 the population of Greater London was 6 million by 1938 million twice what basil jet had planned for yet his mighty sewers were coping the Thames unfortunately was not now the water was pretty bad in the searches no fish of course now I never dreamed of fishing in the River Thames the smell wasn't too bad at low water in certain places where it was muddy you'd get a bit of a smell but here it was just bad but nothing like it was after the war the river was so bad that you could smell it for some distance away but were each various at low water being paddle steamers they seemed to churning out more than anybody else and the smell was terrible it actually turned white paint brown now it didn't matter where now the white paint on our barge is turned round but you can imagine the ship owners did they have a vote passenger ships coming into the row docks painted white all around one trip and then their white paint turned brown it must have customer fortune effluent discharged at barking gradually began to poison waters further and further upstream bacteria multiplied and multiplied consuming the life-giving oxygen dissolved in the water the river which had once supplied a hundred and thirty salmon each day to Billingsgate fish market began literally to choke in 1947 in late summer the Thames died for seven miles from Westminster to barking the water was black and chemically lifeless 80% raw sewage when detergents came to be used in the late forties you could see possibly an agent covering of brown frost all over the river and it worked on a day like this that would be flying all over the place and you'd wish the quest you'd rather not be upload this is one noticeable thing was that as men in those days were apt to drop their condoms down the drain you'd see them floating about and they're indestructible so you'd find those which were a few days old and those that were many weeks old and they'd come out with the flood and down with the year just one of those that came as goldfishes we used to call them in fact we did restore the thames to health but we chose to treat the consequence rather than the cause vast sums were spent on sophisticated new sewage treatment works built to cope with the 70 gallons of sewage produced per person per day the sewage was comprehensively processed tanks settled out the sediment and the aerated liquid was broken down by bacteria in 1974 even the salmon returned however the cleaner it became the more filth we threw out it the apocryphal statement the one often hears about drinking water in London having passed through seven pairs of kidneys before you drink your glass of water there is very very close to the truth what we tend to do is produce a lot of sewage treat it discharge it to the river and little further down there be an abstraction point the waters are abstracted and then cleaned up are very wasteful of resources the WC has proved so irresistible it's created a new culture a culture of disposability first came hard and shiny lavatory paper introduced at the turn of the century shortage of bandages in the First World War led to field dressings of disposable paper water in 1916 soft lavatory paper was introduced the disposable sanitary towel followed in the 1920s in the 1930s the tampon and then the condom in the 50s came colored lavatory paper in the late 60s the panty liner and the disposable nappy since basil jerk completed her sewer system London's population has increased by 23% the amount of sewage received for treatment has increased by two hundred and seventy five percent more than four million rows of lavatory paper are now made every day enough to stretch four times around the earth the difficulty is in providing enough water to wash it away you sewage is chemically we complex the washing-up liquids the bleaches the various things for dyeing the water that nice color blue in your toilet bubble bars we are living very much in a chemical culture in the home the average household uses more than 30,000 gallons of pure drinking water a year 3,300 gallons of it we flush down the pan to remove waste which left to decompose naturally could be carried away in a bucket sanitary insanity in the past nature wound us of sanitary catastrophe by creating a big stink in our sanitized odorless artificial world there'll be no such warning it's up to us the water closet can't be uninvented but it may have to be reinvented as the air closet all the earth closet otherwise if we want to carry on flushing we'll have to spend pounds not pennies but what is the money runs ugh you do

Channel: @MrWhelan_CCW

Views: 56,526

Rating: 4.4545455 out of 5

Keywords: History, GCSE History, SHP GCSE History, Medicine through Time, Public Health, Cholera, Bazelgette, Schools History Project

Id: rDML9-aH2IU

Length: 27min 55sec (1675 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2014